Hello to all!

Step 1: Admitting you have an addiction. Hi I'm Nate and I'm an addict. I was born and raised here in the great state of Washington. My father is also an addict...so it makes sense that I cut my teeth while traveling with him on his quest for a fix. The fix? The pursuit of things wild.

My dad started toting me around in a packframe when I was 14 months old while deerhunting, elk hunting, and steelheading. The rest is history. My story really begins with my dad's...because he had such a huge influence on my life. Pat McDonough grew up in an Irish fly fishing family with 6 other siblings. In the early 70's, he ventured to Alaska at age 15 to work for John and Maggie Gary at Bristol Bay Lodge. He spent several seasons guiding, exploring, and figuring out the fishery Bristol Bay Lodge guests still enjoy today. After several years, Pat moved on from BBL to assist Bus Bergman with the development of B&B Fishing Adventures. The two were the first pioneers to set up a float-trip operation on the now famous Kanektok River.

I was raised with bedtime stories of mousing for trout on the Kanektok, chasing steelhead in British Columbia, and countless other adventures of wild fish in wild places. Dreams of these adventures began haunting my imagination at a very young age. One summer afternoon when I was seven, my dad pulled several dusty boxes out of the garage. I wondered what was inside as he placed them on the kitchen table, and the sparkle in my dad’s eyes told me this surprise would have something to do with fishing. Moments later, my eyes lit up as I gazed across a table filled with brightly colored feathers. I was instantly enamored with tying flies and have been obsessed ever since. There’s an indescribable feeling that comes with taking an idea, creating something tangible, and hooking a fish on it. Soon after, my dad taught me to cast a fly rod, and I began chasing trout and bass across the rivers, creeks, and lakes of Eastern Washington.

My fascination with steelhead leads back to an experience I had while trout fishing on Oregon’s Minam River one summer. I was nine years old, and my dad and I were throwing dries to rising trout in a shaded backchannel lined with willow trees. As I worked my way up the channel, I looked upriver and watched a large fish bolt for deeper water. My jaw dropped as I watched the fish disappear into the depths; this was the biggest fish I’d ever seen. The image of the crimson stripe on the side of that fish was burned in my memory forever. I was overflowing with excitement, and my dad spent the rest of the weekend telling me stories about steelheading.

I became very fascinated with Alaska at an early age as well. My dad always said he would take me on a fishing trip up there, but financial struggles were a burden to my family, and it became apparent that I would need to find my own way to experience AK. It was March of my junior year of high school when I decided to make my first attempt at getting employed in Alaska. I wrote to several lodges explaining my desire to work in AK, and received a job working for a lodge on the Kenai River. I spent my first season learning the ropes of guiding through the school of hard knocks. I was young, but a competent angler, and the crew of veteran guides took me under their wing and became great mentors. After two years of guiding on the Kenai Peninsula, I felt I hadn’t really seen the remote Alaska I had heard about all my life, and I took a job guiding for Bristol Bay Lodge in my dad’s old stomping grounds.

Working for BBL was (and still is) a dream come true. The fishing program allowed me to hone my guiding and fishing skills on many unique streams, each different in their own way. I remember being amazed after coming back from a month of guiding for kings on the heavy flows of the Togiak River, only to begin guiding finicky trout using tail-water techniques on the Agulakpak. The two seasons spent working “The Pak” everyday were a learning experience. After a tough first week, I realized I would have to get serious about learning the fishery in order to be consistent. I remembered my mentors on the Kenai keeping daily logs, and I decided to apply this process to my guiding on the Pak. This journal quickly became loaded with daily entries of water temps, light conditions, water levels, fishing conditions, etc. It wasn’t long before I began to see patterns in the fishery and my guiding became a science. After working and training guides on the Pak for a few years, I was moved to an overnight camp on the Middle Fork of the Goodnews called Birch Creek. This was a huge transition, and when it came to fishing/guiding, I quickly found it to be the polar opposite of the Agulakpak. Guiding on the Goodnews ultimately proved to be more of a hunt than anything else. Like the Pak, I was captivated by the river and it’s mysterious population of trout. Goodnews trout were fairly spread out, and I began to appreciate the” run and gun” techniques associated with covering miles and miles of water. Although few and far between, the payoff was amazing- huge leopard trout on streamers, flesh, and mice with over 30 miles of river all to ourselves. Guiding at Birch was definitely the mecca of my guiding experience thus far.

After working for BBL for four years, I received an offer to take over as our head guide. Fresh out of college, I was thrilled about the offer and decided to jump onboard. The job has been great thus far, and it’s allowed me to work on building a tight-knit group of excellent guides at our lodge. After four stressful months of “keeping the train on its tracks,” I’m fortunate to spend the offseason pursuing my steelhead addiction. Fall is spent swinging flies on Washington’s Grand Ronde and Klickitat Rivers, as well as the Deschutes in Oregon.

Last fall, my dreams came true as I spent a month in British Columbia’s Skeena country and fell in love with “steelhead Mecca.” I’m happy to say this will be an annual migration for me, and I can’t wait to get back up there in October! My winters are spent chasing waterfowl with several hunting buddies and my birddog, Rolie. After bird hunting ends in January, I can typically be found swinging flies for winter steelhead on the Olympic Peninsula. Braving the elements, exploring wild, untamed rivers for wild, winter chromers- there’s nothing like winter steelheading. Like Skeena country, the OP’s rainforest rivers are truly haunting to me.

I created this blog to document my adventures and record everything we as steelheaders (and fly fishermen in general) go through in order to get our fix. From Alaska to fall steelhead in Oregon and Washington to big winter brutes on the coast, it's a journey that inspires me every year...this is what I live for. We'll see you on the river.